


Mucking About With L-Space

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: Black Books, Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Community: intoabar, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 18:32:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2631965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nanny Ogg walks into a bar and meets Bernard Black. Written for intoabar 2014.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mucking About With L-Space

**Author's Note:**

> Characters do not belong to me and I am making no money off this work of fan fiction.

‘I understand what you’re trying to say, madam, but we simply don’t sell any kind of cider as strong as you’re asking me for.’

Nanny Ogg was a reasonable woman. She hadn’t complained when, in the process of dusting her bookshelves (or rather, in the process of overseeing the job while one of her daughters-in-law did it), an errant spark of magic had snapped out and relocated her to a totally foreign city. She hadn’t made a fuss when the magic had deposited her, breathless and stumbling over her own boots, in a cluttered little bookshop. She hadn’t even protested when it became blazingly apparent that nobody was around to give her any idea of what was going on,  or better still a nip or three of brandy.

She was a woman who knew how to find her own stiff drink.

But the insipid bubbly yellow water that the barman was trying to tell her was cider looked as if it had been brewed by someone who had only vaguely heard of apples. If it hadn’t been so bubbly, she would have suspected, due to the colour, that it was something other than cider.

‘This can’t be the best you have.’ Nanny sniffed the drink, which was in a terribly fragile glass instead of a proper tankard, and sneezed. ‘It doesn’t even smell like apples.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ The man at her elbow brandished a handful of coins. ‘Get her a pint of Dirty Granny, and hurry up, I think I’m almost sober!’

‘No chance of that, Bernard,’ the barman said, taking the smaller glass away and beginning to fill a solid glass mug from a different tap. ‘You haven’t been sober since the turn of the century.’

‘Or before it,’ Nanny’s benefactor agreed, reaching over the bar for a bottle and getting his wrist slapped.

 

Nanny waited until the man – apparently Bernard – had collected his drink, and then followed him back to his table.

‘I wasn’t looking for company,’ Bernard said upon realising that he had it whether he liked it or not.

‘Oh, now, you wouldn’t be so cruel to a poor old woman as to deny her a bit of conversation, would you? Lawks,’ Nanny added, and at that Bernard groaned.

‘I had the feeling it was you.’

Nanny had not been taken aback by being hurtled through space and time, so she damn well wasn’t going to let unexpected recognition from a new friend (for such she considered anyone who bought her a drink) flummox her.

‘I expect you’ve heard of me on account of the witching,’ she said. ‘I don’t recognise your face exactly, but you’ve the look of a Bad Ass man.’

Bernard preened. ‘I can be pretty rough and... oh, you mean the town, don’t you?’

‘Of course.’

‘I keep forgetting all the little place names. I do have the updated _Guide to Discworld_ , but it’s been a while since I read it.’

‘Is that like an almanac?’ asked Nanny, who was starting to suspect that they were having two different conversations.

Bernard suddenly looked worried. ‘I’m not sure I should tell you. What if I’m not just imagining this and you really _are_ here?’

Nanny pinched his somewhat sallow cheek, and took another swig of her cider; this one really was quite good, if still a lot fizzier than she was used to. Scumble only fizzed if something was dissolving in it. ‘If I’m not here, then I really don’t know where I am.’

‘You’re here,’ Bernard said, rubbing his cheek. ‘You’re here, but I have no idea how you got here, and you logically shouldn’t be here, and I hate logic. It makes my brain itch.’

‘ _Why_ shouldn’t I be here?’ 

* * *

‘And no elephants?’

‘Not _no_ elephants. Just not big enough to hold up the world.’

Nanny pondered this. ‘The _round_ world.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m still not clear on how people don’t fall off the bottom. Are there nets?’

Every time she asked a particularly difficult question, Bernard bought more drinks.

Nanny _liked_ Bernard.

* * *

‘The big question,’ Bernard said several smaller questions and corresponding drinks later, ‘is how we get you home again.’

‘I expect there’s a way back the same way I got here,’ Nanny said brightly.

‘How was that?’

‘Dunno.’

* * *

The rough drawing on the beer mat of how dimensions might run in parallel and methods of stepping sideways from one to another would have advanced string theory by decades and thoroughly impressed Ponder Stibbons, if he had had the chance to see it.

Unfortunately, Nanny dropped it as they made their way from the bar to the bookshop.

It fell into a gutter where, not being a carefully crafted and sealed paper boat, it promptly sogged apart into an unintelligible mess and out of this story forever.

* * *

‘The next big question,’ Bernard said, looking down at the dog-eared paperback on the shop counter and then up at Nanny, who was not even remotely close to B-format dimensions, ‘is how to get you back in there.’

Nanny wasn’t really paying attention. She was enraptured by the image on the front of the book. She could see that one of the witches was meant to be her, complete with Greebo. The other one in black had to be Esme. The scatty-looking blonde one in the green dress was clearly Magrat.

‘Coo. That looks – accurate,’ she said.

‘Really?’ Bernard gave her an odd look. ‘Even the stockings?’

Nanny hoisted up her skirt to display one lovingly knitted red and white striped sock. ‘Wouldn’t catch me wearing boots like that, though,’ she sniffed. ‘No grip.’ She stamped her solid, hobnailed boot on the floor.

‘So I see.’ Bernard opened the book. ‘You could try reading a bit of it out loud?’

* * *

Nanny landed more or less back in the chair from which she’d been directing operations.

‘Where have you _been_ , Gytha?’ Granny was in fine form, standing in front of the fireplace and directing one of her best glares at Nanny, as if she’d been waiting with that expression on her face for some hours.

‘Having a drink with a friend,’ Nanny said, offering Granny her best innocent smile.

‘Don’t you give me that. You’ve been mucking about with L-space.’

‘What’s that then? A wizarding thing? Did you learn about that from _your_ friend? Your _special_ friend?’

Granny’s glare could have boiled scumble.

They only stopped yelling at each other when Greebo appeared in mid-air at speed, hurtling back into the living room with a strongly accented bellow of, ‘ _Scat_!’


End file.
